It was so bright here. So blindingly white and… sterile. She hated it. Hated the smell of sanitizer that permeated the air, hated the identical hallways, hated the oppressive feeling of death and sickness. She hated these visits, hated that they broke her heart just as much as they gave her hope, the only speck of hope she had left to cling to anymore. Hope that someday her expectant gaze would be met with recognition, instead of blank indifference. Hope that someday the impossible would happen and they’d leave St. Mungos behind as a bad memory.
Adding to the pain of the weekly visits were all the reminders of her actions that the hospital provided. The long term ward wasn’t just home to the person she chose to visit–it was home to plenty of people who had been put there by her and her friends over the course of the war. Plenty of people who’s families were only to happy to tell her exactly what they thought of her, what they thought of her grandmother using her vast fortune to buy Nadia’s way out of the Azkaban stay they thought she deserved. She ducked into a side hallway when she saw one of the more vocal parents of one of her victims coming down the hallway. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with their judgement, not today.
Not that she didn’t deserve it, she realized. All of these people she’d hurt weren’t even the tip of the iceberg–most ended up in body bags, not hospital beds. She didn’t blame their families for hating her–Merlin, she hated herself, really. She’d killed people, tortured them because they weren’t born to the right families? What had given her the right to think she could take another person’s life–that she was so special that she was free to judge who deserved to live and who didn’t? Angry tears stung her eyes–who she was angry at was a long list–her parents, herself, Astoria and Greyback, the world, really. But anger soon gave way to guilt and despair when she realized she had no one to blame for her actions but herself. Everytime she pulled out her wand, it was her choice. Every painful or lethal curse she sent was a conscious decision–she’d done those things. It was her fault.
She’d sunk to the floor of the hallway, thankful for the relative privacy and not noticing someone intruding upon that until they sat down next to her. She sniffed, looking up quickly, her eyes betraying the confusion she felt when she saw Daphne staring back at her. What was she doing here? Then it clicked–Daphne’s grandparents were in the same ward she’d been visiting for months. She wanted to laugh at the irony–all her life she’d mocked Daphne for everything, including Frank and Alice Longbottom’s fate, and now she was here, same as the girl she’d spent so long tormenting. Poetic justice at it’s finest.
It would hurt less if Daphne were looking at her with the same anger and hatred she was so used to seeing, instead of some unknowable emotion–knowing Daphne, it was compassion. Nadia could scarcely believe that there was someone in this horrible world capable of being so wholly good–and she didn’t deserve anyone’s compassion, least of all Daphne’s. Her sobbing subsided, a few errant hiccups making regaining composure difficult, as she spoke, “You don’t–you don’t have to sit here with me.”
